The Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (New York) brought the Santa Claus tradition to the US, their version was named Sinter Klaas. This big fat man in a red suit and beard brought sinter (coal) to bad behaving children.

Everyone knows how rainy it is here in Seattle! When the ground is soggy and there is a hard frost, the water can't freeze because of the expansion so the water is forced out where it freezes into phantasmagorical crystalline shapes. But it all happens at the earth/air boundary so you have to pay attention (and get down on your hands and knees) to see them.

Electronic spam is derived from the 1970 SPAM sketch of the BBC elevision comedy series "Monty Python's Flying Circus." The sketch is set in a cafe where nearly every item on the menu includes SPAM canned luncheon meat.

Anyway, it is estimated that Internet users in the US alone had to endure 6.6 trillion much disliked spam messages this year (from a 2009 Cisco Systems report).

The first crude spamming actually started when Western Union allowed telegraphic messages on its network to be sent to multiple destinations. The first recorded instance of a mass unsolicited commercial telegram is from May 1864. From that time on millions of North American residents would be deluged with nebulous and mostly fraudulent investment offers.

This filthy enterprise today continues an the Internet to an almost unbelievable extent.

A legal note:
Hormel Foods Corporation, the maker of SPAM luncheon meat, does not object to the Internet use of the term "spamming". However, they did ask that the capitalized word "SPAM" be reserved to refer to their product and trademark.

Spamming is often combined with 'plotting' scams, where areas are divided up into plots. It became popular with the stock market boom in the 20s but is still going strong today. With plotting, an area is divided up into plots, with half of the areas being sent spam saying that the price of gold, or whatever, will go up in the next X days or weeks. The other half gets spam that says the price of gold will go down. At the end of the alloted time, the winning half from the first spamming is divided into two, with one half being sent spam saying the price of silver will go up. The other half of course are told the price of silver will go down. The remaining quarter of the people which received spam that actually proved to be true are then solicited for expensive investment letters based on the success of these 'advisories'.

"She sells sea shells by the seashore" She was a real person named Mary Anning; she was struck by lightning as a baby but survived. She said that when she found fossils on the shore it was 'like the lightning' talking to me. She lived in the early 1800s (before Darwin published) and confounded scientists with the bones of no longer existent animals she found. She was a fossil hunter and supported herself by sell seashells. She is credited with discovering the ichthyosaur (between ages 10 and 12) and plesiosaur. She is one of the first to realize what coprolites are. She is lost to history because most of her discoveries ended up in private collections that did not mention her and, well, 'how could a woman actually do that sort of thing'.

She sells seashells on the seashore
The shells she sells are seashells, I'm sure
So if she sells seashells on the seashore
Then I'm sure she sells seashore shells

The Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (New York) brought the Santa Claus tradition to the US, their version was named Sinter Klaas. This big fat man in a red suit and beard brought sinter (coal) to bad behaving children.

Actually, Sinterklaas isn't fat at all. That's something the Americans added themselves :) Could have something to do with the difference in weight of an average Dutch person and an average American person ??

The coal is also an American invention. If you have been a 'bad boy' , you don't get coal, but the black "Piet's" will beat you with a bundle of twigs and put you in a sack. (Not kidding).

In 1862, Lord Kelvin of Glasgow published calculations that fixed the age of the Earth at between 100 million and 400 million years. He assumed that Earth had formed as a completely molten object, and determined the amount of time it would take for the near-surface to cool to its present temperature.

The Earth is now considered to be somewhere around 5 billion years old, and inhabited by people for around 200,000 years. It would be interesting to know when the Earth is considered to be the Earth and not a bunch of stuff being pulled together.

The Earth is now considered to be somewhere around 5 billion years old, and inhabited by people for around 200,000 years. It would be interesting to know when the Earth is considered to be the Earth and not a bunch of stuff being pulled together.

Depending on what value assigned to 'human', Ardie has moved the timeline back to about 4.4 million years ago. She lived in a family group, walked upright, and used tools.

Fossil evidence indicates that modern humans (species Homo sapiens) originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago. Homo sapiens were the only species of humans that had vocal cords, and hence were able to develop a complex language and had the communication skills to pass information to their offspring.

The popular computer language C++ was originally called "C with Classes" by its inventor Bjarne Stroustrup in 1979. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science (1979) from the University of Cambridge, England.

Guido van Rossum, a Dutch computer programmer, was looking for a project to work on during his 1989 Xmas vacation. He created the computer language Python, named after his favorite TV program Monty Python's Flying Circus .

In 1993 Yukihiro Matsumoto developed a scripting language that was more powerful than Perl and more object-oriented than Python. He picked the name Ruby since a ruby is above a perl, and also follows perl in the alphabet.

Snickers is the best selling candy bar of all time and has annual global sales of over $2 billion (USD). It was introduced in 1930, and was named after the manufacturer's (the Mars family) favorite horse.

Well, things just got hotter for the War Department - India is weaponizing the Bhut Jolokia, Ghost Pepper from Changpool, India which has a rating of 1 million Scoville units. Bell peppers are a 1, Tobasco is 2,140, cayenne is around 30 - 50,000; think about that 1 mega-scoville rating and then know that Capsaicin, the pure extract of chili pepper, is rated 16 mega-scoville units.